Do You Want to Build a Snowman?: Finding Moments of Happiness

Yesterday I felt joy for the first time in more than two weeks. Joy. Joy! JOY!

This doesn't mean I'm over "it" (my son's death). But I did feel something wonderful. It was fleeting, but real nonetheless.

That's a long time, at least for me, to be joyless. 15 days of no joy, to be exact. (Not necessarily unhappy, mind you, but living in a state without active joy. To me, there's a real difference.) I hadn't realized it until yesterday, but I normally live in a place of active joy for many of my waking hours. I really do. I love life. I try to live it to the fullest. I think this is why the unexpected loss of my son has been such a shock to me. I briefly spoke about this at Jack's funeral when I referred to feeling immortal throughout my life. The experience of losing my son has really brought me back to earth and brought certain things into focus.

It's also stolen away my active joy, at least for the time being.

About this joy yesterday: nothing major happened to cause it's brief return. It was just a small series of positive interactions and feelings throughout the afternoon. I am grateful for them and for what they did for me. I felt that deep, familiar sense of happiness I usually feel in my life. It erupted from my belly and spread throughout my body like goosebumps during a really special or triumphant moment in a play (think "Defying Gravity" or "Bring Him Home"). This feeling didn't last long, but I really enjoyed it for at least a few hours.

I love that feeling. Joy is truly exquisite. And now, having lost joy for 15 days, I understand more completely God's wish for us to have it in our lives on a regular basis. (2 Nephi 2:25: "Adam fell that man might be; and men are, that they might have joy.")

I had really missed that feeling, but the funny thing is that I hadn't realized it was gone until I got it back. That's how we are with the good things in our lives, isn't it? We don't fully appreciate them until we don't have them any longer. I know that's the case for me with joy. And certainly the case with my son, Jack.

As I've begun charting this pathway through full-time grief back to full-time joy, I was reminded by my loving wife of the Lord's plan for us and the portion of this plan requiring us to feel opposition in all things so that we might obtain the full appreciation of the good over the bad. I hadn't really considered that before, at least not in the deep and personal way I consider it now. Events like this really do change one's perspective.

Not only is my appreciation of joy expanding, but my sense of time has shifted as well. For the time being, everything seems to be measured, at least in my mind, in terms of Before and After (before Jack's passing and after). The thought of time moving forward is unwelcome simply because it puts me farther away from Before. Before is when I had my boy here with me. Before is when I spent time with him. After is when I don't. As time moves forward, it's all After from here on out (at least until our sweet reunion some distant day in the future), and that's a tough, joy-less pill to swallow.

To keep Jack nearby I focus on Before. That's where all the precious moments reside. And there are so very many of them. A five year old boy creates a lot of wonderful memories for a parent to hold onto, which is partly why I'm writing this blog (the other part is because it's a form of free therapy for me).

Here's one of them:

A few weeks Before Christmas, my 8 year old daughter, Katey, had holed up inside our food pantry in the kitchen working on a fun project to do with her younger brothers. It was a surprise. She's always doing these sorts of things. (Jack was definitely cut from the same cloth as her.) She was quietly working on her little project in the pantry when she heard a knock on the door. It was Jack. My wife saw this happening from her vantage point in the kitchen. Jack was looking for something to do. He wanted to play with his sister. He knew she was in the pantry, so he walked up to the door, gently raised his knuckles and lightly tapped on it. "Do you want to build a snowman?" he asked.

There was no snow outside. Jack knew this. It was his code, used just this one time (at least that I know of) for "Will you play with me?"

Even now, this melts me to pieces. My wife told me about this moment the very hour it happened and I've cherished it ever since. He said it so sweetly and perfectly. Pure innocence. It was exactly like the moment in Frozen (a movie Jack really enjoyed) when Anna knocks on Elsa's door and asks her that same question: "Do you want to build a snowman?" It's more than a question about playing together; it's about loving and connecting and valuing the ones you are blessed to have near you.

This memory has been a great source of happiness for me. And there are many many more of them. I play them on a loop inside my head at all times. I could fill a book with them. I probably will.

Sometimes the Lord blesses us with experiences which reinforce His love for us and the love we have for one another. These are called tender mercies. I've come to appreciate these a great deal in the last 15 days. This story of Jack and Katey is a tender mercy, one of the many I hold close and carry with me throughout the day.

This particular tender mercy came full circle yesterday when my wonderful sister-in-law, visiting from Texas, took her children along with my wife and our son, Tate (Jack's twin brother) to the cemetery to visit Jack's grave. She had the idea, while there, to build a snowman for Jack. A snowman! A real one. When this idea came to her, she knew nothing about the story of Jack and Katey from Before. It wasn't until many hours later that she found out about it.

So they did; they built a snowman for Jack. There's not much snow on the ground at the cemetery right now due to the unseasonably warm weather we're having in Utah, so the kids spread out and brought handfuls of snow to Jack's grave from all corners of the cemetery. By the time they were done, a lovely little snowman sat perched on the ground next to Jack's grave. It's perfect. I know Jack loves it.

Tender mercies such as this one are wonderful gifts in times of trial. They provide incredible support and strength to me as I move through this weird reality I now find myself in: the reality of having three children living in my house instead of four. Tender mercies bring respite from grief, focus to life, and healing to pain. The good news is that I've gone from constant melancholy to the next phase. I'm not sure what you'd call it: it's not unhappiness, yet not happiness either--it's somewhere in between. I guess it's just being. Being in the After, with many tender mercies to keep me company.